As a software author, I have strong opinions about licenses

Posted Nov 29, 2006 2:14 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Well I don't like the Novell Microsoft patent deal, but I think your letting your paranoia go a little bit far here.

It's kinda normal behavior when two big companies work together like this. It kinda gets some the patent silliness out of the way.

I am no expert on this sort of thing, but the way I look at it nothing that Novell did or Microsoft did made much of a difference to anybody other then themselves at this point. And it doesn't affect your liability in one way or another.

So Then Why did Microsoft do the deal?

Well Microsoft has trouble in the enterprise. Most enterprise environments are mixed environments. Nobody depends soly on Windows anymore then anybody depends soly on Linux. However Microsoft has a major strikes against it (among other things):

Lack of good virtualization from MS. So lets take a look at virtualization.

It's obvious that Microsoft virtualization technology is not good. It works ok, but it's nothing compared to what Xen/Linux and Vmware stuff can do and compatability with software is bad.

It's obvious that it would take Microsoft another 2 or 3 years to get to the same level of technology (ie have their own Hypervisor to compete with ESX and Xen). And it's obvious that Virtualization is going to start to be very very important in enterprise environments before that happens.

Well Xen is great and it's open source and Microsoft can use it easily. No licensing problems there and MS has worked in the past with Xen.

However Xen requires that you have a Linux system aviable running on it that has access to teh hardware in order to provide the abstraction needed for high-performance Network and Disk I/O emulation. (hence Xen/Linux)

So for Microsoft to compete with Vmware it basicly requires that they have a Linux system aviable that can easily be used to support Xen.

And it's obvious that since this is for the enterprise it doesn't make sense to leave this up in the air and potentionally confuse people. And it doesn't make sense for Microsoft to have their own Linux version as it would be a huge mistake marketting-wise (basicly they would forced to distribute GPL software and admit that they can't do it on their own anymore)

So for Microsoft Windows on Xen to work they need:
A. A third company that is willing to work with them and has the ability and desire to support both Linux and Windows.
B. A need to counter-act the anti-linux fud in a way that it won't bother their own customers to use it, but will still have a effect on the rest of the community.

So how does Microsoft do this?!

Turn to Redhat? (no, to anti-MS won't trust them and looks bad)
What is the other major Linux provider?

Novell of course!

Then to counter-act the fud without reducing it's impact they pay Novell 240 million dollars to reasure their own customers that may wish to run Xen/Linux that they aren't liable. These are MS big customers and when MS says that Linux violates it's IP, they beleive it.

Then of course Novell isn't going to play along just because MS carries a big stick. They need something other then money in return.

So Novell wants to use Linux on the desktop and use Linux systems to support Microsoft Windows on the desktop as workgroup and domain servers.. Which are both something Linux is very weak at.

So what Novell gets in return for supporting Microsoft's virtualization efforts is they get to work with Microsoft in making Linux more suitable to replace Windows servers with Linux.

Microsoft, of course, is not scared at all about Linux on the desktop. They still think it's a joke. 5 years at LOTD hype and the best metrics still put Linux at less then 1-2 percent. So for Microsoft it's a nice trade off.

They have now have Novell supporting Xen/Linux for Microsoft for 5 years, and by that time Microsoft would of had enough time to get a hypervisor out that competes with Vmware ESX stuff and at the same time using Xen/Linux to prevent ESX from taking to strong of a hold.

So that is a major reason why they did this. The patent BS was just to make their own customers feel safe for using Linux in virtualization and support for their own server operating systems.

Lets try to make that backfire on them. :-)

Posted Dec 1, 2006 23:54 UTC (Fri) by shieldsd (subscriber, #20198) [Link]

As a a software author (Jikes) and also employee of a company (IBM) that contributes to open-source, I have some opinions too (though they are of course offered here as just my own, and not on behalf of IBM.)

You say you don't want companies to profit from open-source without sharing.

Why should they have to share? All they have to do is to meet the terms of any license under which they receive software.

However, it is only because companies such as IBM, HP, Intel, Fujitsu, Red Hat, and Novell are able to make sufficient profits from open-source that they collectively contribute well over $1B/year to make Linux better.

I've seen estimates that at least half the major Linux kernel contributors are paid to do their work and they account for substantially more than half the accepted contributions.

You are clearly profiting from their contributions. Why can't they profit from yours?